A decade of The Sims

It's been 10 years since the digital denizens of The Sims first graced computer screens around the world.

And while many "hardcore gamers" are quick to dismiss The Sims despite its astonishing sales of over 125 million copies worldwide, this is an anniversary worth reflecting upon.

A decade ago it was unfathomable that the biggest selling computer game of all time could feature no violence, no plot, no score and could not ever be completed. The Sims was a game that revolutionised the interactive entertainment industry.

Like a virtual dollhouse, The Sims lets players intimately direct the lives of little computer people as they complete everyday activities like eating, working, furnishing the house and making friends. The games are popular with people of all ages, allowing players to pursue fantasies and experiment with different life choices.

Of course, so radical was The Sims a decade ago that it almost never got made.

Even acclaimed games designer Will Wright had a very difficult time convincing Electronic Arts, a publisher with one of the deepest pockets in the worldwide games industry, to support his idea for a life simulator.

“I was describing a game that involved going to the bathroom and taking out the trash at a time when most games were about saving the world or slaying the terrible dragon,” Wright told Screen Play back in 2004.

But despite EA's initial scepticism, The Sims quickly became a cultural phenomenon. Well before the likes of SingStar, Nintendogs, Wii Fit and the "casual gaming" phenomenon, The Sims was responsible for attracting more newcomers, particularly females, to interactive games than any other title before it.

The Sims was the best selling PC game worldwide in 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003. It was only dethroned by its sequel, which was the best selling computer game in 2004 and the second-best seller of 2005. Various expansion packs have also been astonishing sellers throughout the past 10 years, and last year The Sims 3 sold 1.4 million copies in its first week on sale, and was the biggest selling PC game of the year.

Throughout the past decade it has been extremely rare for a Sims title not to be in the Australian PC game charts. During the middle of the decade The Sims was often occupying as many as eight positions in the Top 10: an astonishing feat in a fickle, fast-moving industry.

The Sims franchise has grossed more than $1.8 billion, putting it on par with Hollywood blockbusters like The Matrix trilogy ($1.4 billion) and Avatar ($1.86 billion).

Wright believes the life simulator’s astonishing success had a lot to do with targeting women. “I think the fact that The Sims appealed to the female market automatically doubled the sales," he said.

"The main reason we were able to do that successfully was that about 40 percent of our development team for The Sims (and my two other designers) were women.”

Most developers focus on “hardcore” gamers who spend a lot of their free time and income on their favourite hobby. But Wright said The Sims was designed for “very casual game players” and attracting so many gaming virgins was “very satisfying”.

“The newcomers didn’t really see any other games out there that they wanted to play. So they would buy The Sims, play it, and then just keep playing it for months or years. This is one of the reasons why the expansion packs were so popular.”

Another reason for The Sims longevity was the strong online communities, which offered players customised furniture, characters, clothing and houses. Wright believed the “fan support we received around the game, like fan sites and custom content, was unprecedented.”

The traffic at the official community site for The Sims 3 is still enormous. The site receives about six million unique visitors each month. There are more than 300 content downloads every minute, and there has been over 110 million downloads to date for The Sims 3 alone.

The Sims has also been widely used as a machinima tool for telling stories. Over 20 movies are still uploaded every hour to the Sims 3 official site.

Veteran Australian game developer David Giles said The Sims is “often referred to as a ‘non-game’ as it has no obvious end and can be tinkered with forever".

"It is probably what everybody had hoped Sea Monkeys would really have been like," said Giles. "The player is able to be creative and have an inbuilt audience that can appreciate what they have made.”

Of course, much of the appeal of The Sims is that there is no "right way" to play. Some players will spend all of their time obsessing over building the perfect house, or trying to make their Sims lead very successful lives. Others revel in drama and chaos, or enjoy the thrill of playing God by experimenting with different scenarios to see how their Sims react.

Psychologist Kathryn Wright believes The Sims appeals to many base instincts, including narcissism, voyeurism and consumerism.

“The Sims acts as more of a mirror for the player than most games,” she said. How a player tackles the game reveals much about their personality.

“You can really see a lot of (the player’s) psyche spilling out into their games," agreed John Suler, a Psychology Professor. “I spoke to one teenager who created a version of herself and her boyfriend. Then she created another version of herself, an evil version, to try to steal her boyfriend. She wanted to see what it's like to be evil.”

Wright said that he thinks "we all have a very personal response to the environment that surrounds us. Because of this we enjoy exploring hypothetical environments in our imaginations."

Dr Andrew Stapleton, a former game researcher at Swinburne University of Technology, said with the Sims Wright “tapped into human fascination with soap opera dramas and reality TV like Big Brother".

" The Sims has the same sense of voyeurism by putting the players in a position of omnipotence within the game world, allowing them to create environments and situations, observe the consequences, and then ultimately decide whether to respond to the events faced by the characters.”

Catherine Beavis, an Associate Professor in education at Deakin University, told Screen Play on the eve of the release of The Sims 2 that she believed children could learn a great deal from playing the game.

“The Sims teaches about aspects of the ways society works," she said. "In some schools in Australia and the UK the game is used to help teach basic aspects of social studies, issues such as family and work, socialization. In a way, it's an online continuation of much older forms of play that children have engaged in for generations - building imaginary worlds in the hedge, the back yard, vacant lots, down by the river, building cubby houses, playing dress ups or playing with dolls.”

Wright said that “one of the first things people generally do with the game is to put themselves into it, maybe their family, their wife, their neighbours, their house".

"As you are playing you are, from the Sims' point of view, balancing all these factors in their little life: work, family, kids and all that; and you can't help, as you play the game for a little while, but start developing a deeper awareness of your own life.”

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Recent comments

Anthony Murphy

February 10, 2010

08:15 AM

I never really play the Sims in the way you're supposed to. I made a hobo clown in The Sims 3 who wanders around town begging for food and talking his way into people's houses where he mooches food, sleep and maybe a shower.

This has left him with enough free time to max his charisma stat. Local corporations keep inviting the hobo clown to talk at their functions because he's so charismatic.

Live the dream, Hobo Clown!

As long as they keep letting me do weird stuff like this I'll keep playing The Sims.

Joka

February 10, 2010

08:29 AM

The Sims: The best game to be a house designer. Probably the only reason why I would fire it up these days.

singo the dingo

February 10, 2010

08:53 AM

Interesting piece Jason, I particularly like the range of voices in it.

I would raise one question though - is The Sims actually a game or is it a toy? (Not to disrespect it in any way, that kind of popularity is beyond dispute)

If it doesn't have any goals, how can you win?

Jarvinen (2007) identifies nine elements that all games must have at least seven of to be considered games.

* Players – those who play
* Game mechanics – actions players take to attain goals in the game
* Components – resources for play
* Environment – the space for play
* Ruleset – the goals and constraints of play
* Information – what the player needs to know
* Theme – the subject matter of the game
* Interface – a tool for accessing game elements
* Context – when, where, why, how and by whom the game is played.

Actually, when you look at these, I guess it might be considered a game but the lack of a goal still makes it feel more more like, well, a sim to me.

Wall

February 10, 2010

10:19 AM

I never got into The Sims in any way but it was great that such a different game became so popular. A little unfortunate that the cash went into EA's coffers but if recent patterns are to be trusted, they're getting a little less evil every day, or at least providing the illusion of such.

Surprisingly though, everyone I knew who played it never really killed their Sims which I thought was nice in the face of all the internet celebration of locking Sims in rooms with no doors etc. One of my mates actually replicated his own house and all the people in it, much to his housemate's amusement and fascination. Everything from the housemate's appearances to the furniture in every room was as close as possible as he could make it. I thought that was really cool.

God..the Sims...Why don't people go out and get REAL jobs, and build REAL houses, and get REAL relationships, and have REAL kids and Pets..geez...

oh, and Piracy, R18+ Rating and....Borderlands.

owza

February 10, 2010

10:57 AM

I played sims for a while when it first came out. All would be well as I'd save for a cleaning robot, then it would all kinda turn to crap.They would all being unhappy all the time.

So i'd give up, and burn them all. Hmmm Maybe I'll give it a go again.

barrymoves

February 10, 2010

12:06 PM

Did someone say Borderlands?

The Sims? Meh. Never played it, not enough to interest me, and I need the satisfaction of finishing. Mrs barry loves the Sims of course...in fact the only people that I know of who play the Sims are female.

Joka

February 10, 2010

12:14 PM

Oh and Sims 2 featured an awesome metal radio station, which can be reconfigured into mp3 format. Love Simian metal.

James

February 10, 2010

01:18 PM

The Sims is great.

I think the reason my sister is doing architecture at Uni is because I introduced this to her all those 10 years ago...

Jason you fresh-faced young whippersnapper I don't expect you to remember this (you probably weren't even born) but this game was invented by Will Wright way back in 1985 for C64 and was later published as SimCity by Maxis in 1989. So it's not a decade old it's actually a QUARTER CENTURY OLD !! My kids and I were playing it on a Tandy 2000 twenty years ago. Around the same time Bill Gates starting to a possible life through Windows...

Jason says: Fresh-faced young whippersnapper? I'm flattered. But we're talking about The Sims franchise here, not the entire genre of Sim games, which yes, Will Wright pioneered after finding that he was enjoying making cities (rather than blowing them up) while developing Raid on Bungling Bay.

Ronny

February 10, 2010

05:37 PM

The "playing with little people" genre was pioneered in Little Computer People (if not earlier - eg. Conway's "Life"). Wright's innovation was boosting the customisation of your peoples' environment.

Been a bit disappointed with Sims3. I was expecting a vast improvement but it's only a marginal graphics enhancement on Sims2 and the behaviour processes are still klunky. Another backward step is that you can't see the Sims once they enter a store, cafe or workplace. Can see those features appearing on another expansion disk in the future. More simoleans.

benda

February 10, 2010

08:06 PM

Get a life, sims stands for simulation and people who pay this game are all losers who probably can not function in a REAL world.

Squishy

February 10, 2010

11:28 PM

I'm glad someone linked Alice and Kev - that blog is amazing!

@singo - the goal is to make your sims do whatever you want. Want them to grow up and have grandchildren? That's your goal. Want them to be a wandering hobo clown? That's the goal. (Maybe it's too much like a Barbie doll...)

You could suggest that the 'goal' is to attempt to achieve as many things as you want to in the lifespan of the sim. Is that goal-driven enough for your definition?

(Realistically, if the Sims doesn't have a goal, then neither does World of Warcraft - you can complete all the achievements and obtain all the items, but let's face it, you can do that in the Sims as well.)

My only issue that I've ever had with the Sims franchise is the sheer amount of loading time involved for the 'casual' player. They've spent so long creating this virtual world for casual gamers that it's beautifully textured and has incredible detail... but takes it out of the hands of the casual gamer who just wants to stuff around for 10 minutes here and there.

Mummypig

February 11, 2010

08:15 AM

Actually, each Sims game has several goals and subtasks that players can choose to tackle. These can be centered around a particular aspiration and vary in difficulty. To add to this, there are many 'Sims Challenges' that people can try to complete.

Some people spend years playing with the different generations of people within one town, following their lives and seeing how everthing turns out.

Others, like me, tend to never get as far as even building a town because they're so stuck on building the perfect house! A great way to see how your own house would look with a few improvements ;)

WillEee

February 11, 2010

08:33 AM

People like benda miss the point. Dah, I get it it, it's a simulation, a form of escapism. Just like reading a book, watching TV, going to the movies, etc. And who out there never accesses a little escapism? Perhaps the haters need to get WooHooed and chill a little :)

Van

February 11, 2010

09:56 AM

Firstly i dont really play the sims, i have my own house to clean and job to go to and dont feel like doing it all again in my spare time.

In response to singo the dingo though the "Game" does not lack goal. its goal is to live a simulated life and reach smaller goals throughout the way and live the life you want your sims to live, die and repeat..endless but still a goal. I guess your like me and like clear cut goals like kill this and win.....

Peter_C

February 11, 2010

10:01 AM

As far as The Sims go, the only thing remarkable about it is how unremarkable it is. Just because it has sold as many copies as it has doesn't make it great. I am confident that Hyundai has sold more cars worldwide than Ferrari, it doesn't necessarily make them superior.

Basically it lacks everything that a great game should have. I just don't get it...

singo the dingo

February 11, 2010

10:09 AM

@Squishy - I think you raise a good question - do goals that you create yourself make something a game?

I like The Sims (and all of the sequels and add-ons) - but I still think it's a toy rather than a game (just not in a bad way.)

Adding your own rules and win-states would make it a game of sorts but doesn't achieving a final goal generally suggest that the game is over and you have succeeded.

For a goal-based task/whatever to be meaningful, I would assume that the game would be coded in such a way as to make achieving the goal challenging, with built in opposition trying to stop you. (This could be something as simple as a time-limit or having x number of attempts to succeed)

WoW has these obstacles because it sets the conditions for success while The Sims doesn't because they're all up to you. It probably is still a game if you decide to have five kids in a day (or whatever it is, I'm not a micromanagement gamer personally) but we can do the same thing with matchbox cars or star wars mini-figures.

I don't think simulations are better or worse than games but they are different

luverly_5pam

February 11, 2010

05:01 PM

Congratulations Jason, this was posted on the front page of stuff.co.nz

My daughter enjoys The Sims however one day she recreated our family (which is separated) as a family unit and then accidentally burnt the mother character to death in a kitchen fire.

Needless to say her enthusiasm dimmed for awhile.

As people identify more closely to the Sims than to the weird aliens shot by the thousands in many shoot-them-up games, in one light I think games that allow people to come this close to reality design more mature ratings than the ones that simply have you shooting things.

Of course, until we have an R rating for games in Australia and apply some reason and balance to the treatment of violence in games versus real-life situations we're likely to continue to see this type of issue occurring.

(BTW she got over it and is very well adjusted - and has NEVER burnt her real mother in the kitchen)

Sayder

May 29, 2010

03:56 PM

I LOVE THE SIMS! ive loved it for years and years and im now turning 20 and i STILL love it, sometimes i choose sims over doing my uni assignments but i cant help it, its so awesome!

i actually built my house, my fioncee's house, the house were moving into when were married, my dream home, my best friends house. and the best part is, i furnished and painted the wall of the house that im going to move into and now i know where to put everything, what colour to paint the walls, how i wants my front and back lawn, its great! people say my buildings are so good they recommened that i take up architecture! :) but too bad im not a math person! anyway thanks!

Comments Terms & Conditions

When posting comments on our blogs, you agree to be bound by our terms and conditions.
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Video games are the new pop. Australians now spend more money on shooters and sims than hip hop and punk rock. Debate the latest news and trends in interactive entertainment with award-winning games writer Jason Hill.